NuDisc

Is 8 CDs too much for a one-artist box set? It depends. 8 CDs of who? How about BUZZCOCKS? If that’s a resounding “Not at all,” then you’re gonna want Sell You Everything 1991-2014, an all encompassing set of (I’m pretty sure) every last minute Manchester’s finest punk band ever recorded up until then. Though this set starts after the legendary group’s heyday, there’s a lot to recommend it.

Sell You Everything’s first disc is called The 1991 Demo Album and is just that: thirteen demos the band recorded prior to their reunion album (and Disc 2 of this set), 1993’s Trade Test Transmissions. These demos sound really rockin’ and it’s surprising that they actually went and re-recorded them. (This disc has also been released as a standalone vinyl album.) Some of the demos were featured on a preceding EP (’91’s Alive Tonight) and the rest turn up on the ’93 album mentioned above. That album is a great one and was a welcome addition to the band’s oeuvre. The next few discs are all of varying quality – and that is, good to great – and include 1996’s All Set, ’99’s Modern, 2003’s eponymous Buzzcocks, and 2006’s Flat-Pack Philosophy. All of the albums themselves feature some beefy, bang-up Buzzcocks material, and all of these discs contain bonus tracks culled from various singles and other sources.

2011’s A Different Compilation, despite the excellent songs themselves, is a mixed bag. Buzzcocks had already released two albums on Cooking Vinyl and someone had the bright idea at this point to have them re-record some of their greatest tunes. Maybe it was a case of the band wanting to have control of their classic material for use in other media (movies, television, etc.), maybe it was, “if this sells we’ll be willing to let them record all new material for the next album,” maybe it was any number of other semi-plausible ideas. Whatever the case, it’s another example of interpretations (basically, cover versions) that are too much like the originals to warrant their existence for all but the band’s biggest fans. I mean, it’s not like you can’t get the original recordings on any number of compilations that are still available if you don’t already have them. Hearing the band thirty-something years later doing “Boredom” or “Why Can’t I Touch It?” for instance, is jarring because though they’re trying to sound like they did back then, their voices just don’t sound like what they once did and so the songs end up sounding like inferior versions of classic tunes. And who wants to listen to that? (For the record, I’ve heard bands like Blondie, Squeeze and Cracker cover their own material and I’ve not been impressed by any of them, either.)

Thankfully, for the band’s final album represented here, 2014’s The Way, Buzzcocks are back to doing new music. It’s another fairly solid album; “Keep on Believing” is a good song with trademark razor sharp guitars, but “People Are Strange Machines” is a bit on the pedantic side. In other words, there’s some good stuff here and some okay stuff, too.

Buzzcocks’ Sell You Everything is a twenty-five year survey that gives you all of the studio material from the second half of their lifetime and it’s eight discs of some damn good punk rock from one of the top British punk bands. Yes, it might be easier to sift through, say, a 3CD compilation of the best of that material, but as usual Cherry Red gives you so much value for the money that you might as well get the complete albums and their singles’ b-sides in one handy box set. After all, one person’s “best of” choices aren’t everybody’s so you may as well decide for yourself what’s great and what’s just good.  — Marsh Gooch

3.5/5 (Cherry Red CRCDBOX93, 2020)